35. Seminar - State of Affairs at the Outset of 1980
Six PM, New Year's Eve, 31 December 1979, Conference Room B, International House, the Roppongi section of Tokyo, a Seminar starts at an oval mahogany table. The newly transplanted to Tokyo Professor John Edwardes stands at head of table facing the far door to corridor, looking snappily good in salt & pepper sports jacket, brown slacks and white shirt & Windsor-knotted necktie which shows a gold background Mona Lisa. Edwardes is now gone white-hair and with a few new facial wrinkles. He introduces Seminar to a table-round of new faces excepting Eddie seated on his left.
"Well, seminarans, good evening, the last of 1979. This is the first in a new series in Tokyo, thanks to my friend, here. (He indicates Eddie with nod) We shall review the world as a new decade looms. I'll start off by summarizing from the standpoint of retired sociologist recently expatriate in Tokyo.
"Overarching is a good word to use for the specter that haunts our world today." Edwardes presses button dimming light and flashes a slide on screen behind him.
"What you see is Earth's human-population increase with the last published figure for 1975 at 4-billion and a projection it will pass 6-billion by year 2000. Ladies and gentlemen! In the words of a popular song, Something's got to give! And it must happen somewhen soon!"
A Japanese late middle-aged man raises right hand. Edwardes nods toward him.
"I am Kimura of Nippon News. We here in Japan are experienced in high population density. Considering our livable land, we have thirteen times the population density of U.S.A. And, thanks to your General MacArthur's constitution, we have easy abortion so our population is stable. And we have used the modern technology to solve the problems of living in high density. I think you will agree we are not unhappy. So why should you not have faith in technology to solve this problem you show on the graph on the wall?"
Edwardes smiles "Thank you, Mr Kimura, for a first, best question. You refer to the old, good technofix. As sociologist, I am not unaware that cultural controls can allow an earth of 10-billion living in a state of satisfaction as we see in Japan today. But that would need a universal culture. Unfortunately for Earth, what you have here in Tokyo and the rest of your country is a microcosm, and a very exceptional one, that has learned to live together densely and to cooperate. If the USA today suddenly had thirteen times the population it has now, we would be seeing the Elvis Presley movie Wild in the Streets." He laughs at his allusion.
Eddie's friend Ivan interrupts (to Edwardes's delight; Seminar works by interruption).
"Yeah, professor, and that's the good ol' US of A! But compare to a place like India! Have you ever been to Calcutta? - Oh Calcutta!" he sings out in joking allusion to the Broadway play. "When you drive in from airport, you see people sleeping in 3 tiers on sidewalks."
Edwardes retakes the discussion. "I think the point is made. Although the technofix could allow a doubling of population with affluence, it requires a unified culture we don't and won't have under the nationalisms that rule the world today.
"And may I say, we and many other persons of good will in USA, western Europe and Japan, sit in our seminars happily debating a future wave which we are in the cusp of and which in 30 years is going to come crashing down on future generations. We are going to have a huge killing off and destruction of civilization to produce a society where the lives we cherish today are, as in the novel, Gone with wind."
"So what can we do about it Professor?" sounds a woman's voice on Edwardes's right. He nods her to continue and she does. "I am Miss Harumi, your seminar's local communist," she laughs, and speaks in a California accent where she learned her English. "May I say I represent the enemy of USA capitalism. The Americans have no sense of being stewards of the land - they are greedy land grabbers, they have poisoned Earth."
"Allow me to examine that," says Edwardes, warming to a subject he has thought much about. "I have been observing the world scene long. I shall get right to the point. Earth and Homo sapiens (He chuckles, “or should I say Sap?”) had a chance to slip through the crack in the population growth curve until 1944. The USA had by 1944 all but won the World War 2 and it had a leadership that was ready for a rational science civilization in partnership with the Soviet Union's Russia. Think of it: the huge resources, the ingenuity, the preservation of the American continent under a New Deal Roosevelt leadership united to the new collective experiment in living of the Soviet Union with the rest of the world prostrate. And the killing off that happened during World War 2 left a world population of 2-billion and more than half was concentrated among the primitive, backward, and non-energy consuming peoples of Africa, Latin America, the Indian subcontinent and China. The situation was ripe for science civilization under Pax Atomica of USA in cooperation with USSR."
He pauses for effect and looks around almost into each seminaran's soul, it seems to Eddie.
"But the fly in the ointment is that the opportunity hinged on a physically, failing leader President Franklin Roosevelt, popularly known as FDR." Edwardes pauses for effect. "I put my finger on the moment in 1944 where man's fate swung towards the catastrophe almost upon us today. It happened in July, 1944, the Democratic party presidential nomination convention in St. Louis Missouri. Unknown to almost every American except a few democratic party bigwigs with access to the president's medical examination, the president, FDR, was on a collision course with sudden death within the year after his re-election. And at that moment in the summer of 1944, his successor was slated to be the vice president, Henry A. Wallace, a committed Roosevelt New Deal man who worked closely with FDR's wife Eleanor and was on record favoring a science-civilization future with USA exercising big brother cooperation over USSR enforced by the coming atomic bomb. But the Democratic Party politicos prevailed on a weakened FDR to dump Henry Wallace in favor of the manageable country-hick, political-hack Harry Truman.
"So it happened.
"And in November 1944, Truman became the heir and FDR died in April 1945. Then with Truman ignorantly the president but really his right wing advisers calling the shots, the most incredibly stupid foreign policy one could imagine began. Despite having an atomic weapon sole ownership and despite the obvious need and good possibility for USA-USSR cooperation, Truman and his right wing cronies embarked on a Cold War that a following, wiser President Eisenhower pointed to as heralding the rise of the military industrial complex. And now for more than 30 years, this Cold War has sapped the resources, energies and minds of Homo sap and meanwhile we have seen a massive increase in the power of the nation state and in the population growth curve a you see in front of you."
The communist woman Harumi interrupts. "The professor is not only correct in that analysis, but as for its result, I can tell you as an intelligent committed communist here in Japan in 1979 that the capitalists have all but won the Cold War. By CIA machinations and with the help of capitalist roader Mao Tse-tung they have cause the Sino Soviet split and they are working the Muslims in Afghanistan to exhaust the Soviet Union while they foment discord within the USSR's corrupt leadership. And you should all know what will happen once the Soviet Union collapses. Capitalism will go crazy with power that previously it had to balance against the power of the USSR." She sits.
Edwardes says, "So that is where we are."
''What is left for us intelligent persons who care about Earth?" he asks rhetorically.
"Here is my advice: Each of us New People should strive for personal excellence in all ways while seeking the happy, healthy long life. We should learn to recognize each other and help each other. As for the old race - whatever color, politics, religion? The best thing is to let them run crazy until they die and not to shed a tear."
Eddie stands. "Professor I disagree. The old society can't be allowed to progress. It is going to cause a runaway hot box with its overpopulation, over-consumption and fossil fuel crazy use. Wherever we can, we should work to destroy the old ways as long as doing so will not harm us. We should infiltrate at its highest level; and at its lowest level we should plant bombs everywhere. We should try to convert the children. I really do not know the answer - we are still so few. But I do not go for quietism."
This is an unusual outburst for the usually politically mute Eddie.
Edwardes responds. "Thus speaks youth and I am not here to disagree. OK, folks, lets eat and drink now and in individual tete a tetes give each other ideas. Thank you all."
Eddie leaves Seminar profoundly disturbed.
End of Chapter. To continue next, click 16.36 Eddie's Opioid Program
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